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TULSI-PRAJÑA
significance of expression and communication in the logical and predicational pattern.
Syadvāda' is formed of the two words 'syāt' and 'vāda'. Syāt' very often supposed to suggest the meaning of doubt' or 'perhaps' but 'syāt' does not express doubt or uncertainity. It refers to a point of view or in a particular context, or in a particular sense,51 Vada' presents a theory of logic and metaphysics. Syādvāda means a theory of predication of the description of reality from different points of view, in different contexts or from different "universe of discourse." Syadváda is the expression of the pictures of reality obtained from different points of view in definite and determinate logical predication. 52
The Jaina acāryas have made syādvāda the foundation of Jaina philosophy. Syādvāda promotes catholic outlook of many sided approach to the problem of knowledge of reality. It is antidogmatic and it presents a synoptic picture of reality from different points of view. Syādvāda expresses a protest against one-sided, narrow, dogmatic and anatical approach to the problem of reality. It affirms that there are different facets of Reality and they have to be understood from various points of view by the predictions of affirmation, negation and indescribability. The thinker having one sided view in his mind can see only one face of Reality, such thinker cannot realise reality in full. For this reason, Acārya Samantabhadra says that the word syāt is a symbol of truth.53 And therefore, the Jaina Ācāryas say that in some cases of predications, even if the term the syat is not used, it is to be considered as implict in the predication."
Syādvāda presents a comprehensive and synoptic picture of reality which expresses presence and co-existence with particular points of view, of the different characteristics like the permanence and impermanence, similarity and difference, expressibility and inexpressibility, reality and appearance.56
Syādvāda is that conditional method in which the modes, or predictions (bhangāb), affirm (vidhi), negate (neşedha) or both affirm and negate, severally (prthagbbūta) or jointly (samudita), in seven different ways, a certain attribute (dharma) of a thing (vastu) without incompatibility (avirodhana) in a certain context (prasgavaśāt).66 That is, no model assertion, or proposition,--simple or complex, affirmative, negative or both,-can, at once, express anything other than aspect (prakāra) of the truth of a thing. The full truth, or rather the synthesis of truths, can result only from a well-ordered scheme of propositions (vacanaviayāsa). Each proposition is, therefore, relative to, or alternative with the other propositions which in
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